Latest news with #PublicDomain
Winnipeg Free Press
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Drag sabbath
'Mom, are all rabbis drag queens?' Sandi DuBowski overheard a 10-year-old boy in California ask that question after screening his latest film, a sprawling documentary about Amichai Lau-Lavie, a suis-generis, queer religious leader — the nephew of the former chief rabbi of Israel — who moonlights as the bombastic blond Rebbetzin Hadassah Gross. As a filmmaker, DuBowski is drawn to the stories of risk takers who defy containment. Enter Lau-Lavie, whom DuBowski first learned about while working on Trembling Before G-d, his trailblazing 2001 portrait of gay and lesbian Orthodox and Hasidic Jews straddling multiple worlds. Supplied Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie moonlights as the bombastic blond Rebbetzin Hadassah Gross. 'I went to Jerusalem to look for people to be in the film and everyone kept saying, 'You have to meet Amichai.' So I met him and asked him to be in the movie and he refused because he was too much of a diva: he wanted his own movie. He said, 'I don't do collage,'' recalls DuBowski, who grew up in Brooklyn. But DuBowski and Lau-Lavie developed a trusting relationship in the months that followed, and by 2003 the documentarian had hit the record button. What ensued over the next two decades was Sabbath Queen, a deeply rewarding longitudinal portrait of one man's constant religious and spiritual evolution set against the backdrop of an increasingly hostile world. 'People used to tell me it was like what Richard Linklater did in Boyhood, and I would say, yes, but it's more like Rabbihood,' says DuBowski, in Winnipeg for tonight's screening at Public Domain (633 Portage Ave.), where viewers will be treated to a Q&A and an accompanying Shabbat snack spread. The level of access and scope of his connection to his central character was unprecedented for DuBowski, 55, whose own life experiences consistently found a mirror in Lau-Lavie, who, under tremendous professional risk, conducted an interfaith wedding ceremony for the filmmaker and his husband, Eric. 'I think for me, this is really a mid-life film. It's about holding these big questions, testing and compromising around structures and systems. Like, where do you push? There's an inside-outside strategy Amichai employs, so that's part of it. I think just watching the unfolding of a life.' Winnipeg Jets Game Days On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop. That reverse origami reveals a subject, as well as a filmmaker, constantly reorienting himself within the context of both a flexible modern world and a static, text-based landscape, assessing the strictures of religion to renegotiate the boundaries of inherited tradition. As the film progresses, DuBowski and Lau-Lavie are revealed as deeply introspective, considerate and intellectually open characters, willing to engage soulfully with questions asked both within and without global Jewish communities: Who is Jewish? Who is godly? Who are we to even ask such questions? Supplied Director Sandi DuBowski 'I was at a retreat with Amichai and we were told to lie down and imagine our funeral, our eulogies, our purpose in life, and I got up that night crying. 'Amichai, I wish I could become a rabbi.' At that point, the conservative Jewish movement that I grew up in didn't accept openly gay or lesbian rabbis,' DuBowski recalls. 'And Amichai comforted me and said that artists are the new rabbis, and that's when I became an artist. I have no rabbis in my family, but I really do feel like I live by that idea — artists as the new rabbis — and that's how I'm trying to do my own version of spiritual work.' Ben WaldmanReporter Ben Waldman is a National Newspaper Award-nominated reporter on the Arts & Life desk at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Ben completed three internships with the Free Press while earning his degree at Ryerson University's (now Toronto Metropolitan University's) School of Journalism before joining the newsroom full-time in 2019. Read more about Ben. Every piece of reporting Ben produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
The Intercept
17-03-2025
- Politics
- The Intercept
Trump Fired Park Rangers — But Not the Ones Who Tend to the White House
This story was originally published in Public Domain . As the Trump administration fired hundreds of probationary Park Service employees in February, it spared a special subset from the purge — it exempted from the mass firings National Park Service staffers that help manage the White House and President's Park. Records viewed by Public Domain show that at least three NPS probationary employees at the White House, including park guides, received exemptions from the mass firings specifically on the grounds that they worked at the White House. The records were corroborated by an Interior Department source familiar with the matter, but who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. The National Park Service maintains the White House property and President's Park. The NPS workforce there includes gardeners, guides, painters, and maintenance staff. The Park Service, in a statement, said it does not comment on personnel matters. It did note, however, that NPS employees at the White House have security clearances. In mid-February, in what has come to be known as the Valentine's Day massacre, the Trump administration eliminated roughly 1,000 NPS probationary employees across the country. These employees served as rangers, guides, visitor center staffers, scientists, and more. The firings spanned the nation, from Valley Forge in Pennsylvania to California's Yosemite. Particularly hit hard were places like Everglades National Park, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and Rocky Mountain National Park, all supremely popular destinations that reportedly lost a dozen or more employees each. These firings were part of the broader effort, driven by Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, to decimate staffing at federal agencies in all parts of government. But while the general American public was witnessing the sudden loss of large numbers of staff members at their favorite Park Service locations, the president and his visitors were spared the same experience at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The directive to exempt the NPS probationary staff at the White House came down to NPS from higher up in the Interior Department, according to the source. The DOGE-driven mass firings may have been illegal. A federal judge in Northern California last Thursday ordered the Trump administration to immediately reinstate thousands of probationary employees across government, calling the administration's justification for the terminations a 'sham.' The Trump administration is appealing the order. 'It is a sad, sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that's a lie,' wrote U.S. District Judge William Alsup of Trump's actions. 'That should not have been done in our country.' Among those to be reinstated are Park Service probationary staff.
